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November 11, 2008
Exclusive: Goliath-fighting Davids
President Abraham Lincoln said, “Any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.” The president of course was referring to heroes and heroism in the purest sense of the words.
When Lincoln uttered the phrase in the 19th century, an action deemed “heroic” was not nearly as interpretively subjective as it might be today. It didn’t need to be. It was clear to all what heroes and heroics were, because “heroism” was defined then as “distinguished bravery or gallantry; noble disregard of danger; and intrepidity.”
Today, unfortunately, “hero” has been diluted to include “a person noted for special achievement in a particular field,” and the word itself has become often synonymous with “star” and “celebrity.”
By today’s standards – infused with all manner of entitlement, self-esteem, and spread-the-wealth goodies where politicians are considered “champions,” every youth-league ballplayer gets a trophy, and those who contribute nothing to society get a tax break – the word hero has been watered down to include practically anyone who performs a good or noble deed, works hard, or – in the most pathetic examples of so-called heroism – simply does what any decent human being should do in the first place.
Fact is, heroes in the pure sense rarely emerge from the ranks of athletes, actors, community organizers, volunteers, and politicians.
Where we do, however, find “heroes” in the pure sense (and in the greatest numbers) is among our military veterans – the group from which springs Goliath-fighting Davids: men like U.S. Navy SEAL and Medal-of-Honor recipient Lt. Michael E. Thornton, who in the middle of a hellish high-intensity firefight during the Vietnam War, wounded and surrounded by overwhelming numbers of the enemy, made a mad dash over hundreds of yards of open ground to save his more seriously wounded commander, killing two enemy soldiers in close quarters, sprinting toward the sea – constantly under fire – with his commander on his shoulders, and ultimately swimming for over two hours with two wounded men in tow before being rescued.
Mike is a hero to be sure. But there are so many others.
Some heroes are recognized like Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston, who – as a young captain of Marines (also in Vietnam) – led his company in “a savage assault” (according to his Medal of Honor citation) against over 100 enemy positions, killing scores of enemy soldiers, always at the points of heaviest fighting, shouting words of encouragement to his Marines, and being wounded three times.
Others will never be recognized because either there were no survivors of the particular action for which their heroic deed or deeds were performed, or the deeds were simply overlooked among other amazing feats of heroism performed by fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines in the same action.
I’ve often written about the common threads running through these heroes. But the two threads I too-often neglect to mention is that they all wear the uniform of the United States, and they all serve under essentially the same colors that Gen. Washington’s frostbitten heroes carried as they surged into the little snow-covered town of Trenton, New Jersey on Christmas night 1776.
On this day – Veterans Day 2008 – we Americans celebrate these heroes and the unbroken line (stretching from Lexington and Concord to Fallujah and Kandahar) from which these heroes sprang: As we should. Because – despite wrongheaded 21st century assumptions about what a hero may be – he (or she) must first be someone who is willing to “lay down his life for his friends.”
And that is the common thread found running through all of America’s military veterans, which includes the bona fide heroes, those who might well have been heroes, and those destined to be.
[Support the Medal of Honor Society's 2010 Convention.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
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